


What we know about Pepper

by Endrina



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-22
Updated: 2018-07-22
Packaged: 2019-06-14 10:17:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 9,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15386610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Endrina/pseuds/Endrina
Summary: Pepper is more than Tony’s assistant-turned-girlfriend. She has a life, or five.





	1. People in the same body

**Author's Note:**

> I am using fandom universe and continuity. Following the timeline of the movies but adding that happy period in which everybody was friends and living in the tower. We never got that in the movies. 
> 
> Many thanks to racheldoinglines for the beta work. Any remaining mistakes are the work of a gremlin adding typos after posting.

There was a birth certificate somewhere for a Katherine Delilah Morrow, born to Jenny Lee Morrow at Lowell Correctional Institute, Florida.

Prison.

It shouldn’t matter. It really, really, shouldn’t matter. But it does. Being born in prison has a certain influence in your life. Then more than now. Although of course she didn’t grow up there, she was only born in prison.

You might wonder who was taking care of her. The easy answer would be The State, as an entity, and through it different appointed wards. Foster homes, foster parents, a grandma here and there, an uncle who fought tooth and nail for her and then immediately forgot about her and sent her back to the grandma that had lost her custody. By age fifteen it didn’t matter because she was six states over, pretending to be a college-age girl and working in a bar where she could get the card information of clients. She said her name was Maggie and she was experimenting with a shade of blonde different from her natural own.

Eventually she was arrested for fraud and theft and a few other charges from the card stealing. They were threatening possession, too, even though that was all her boss and she hadn’t touched any of it. Drugs made you vulnerable and she didn’t like being vulnerable.

She didn’t go to jail though. Somehow, between one work shift and another in the police station, she went from arrested felon to upset girlfriend who didn’t have enough to post bail for her man but please, if only they listened to her, Barry was a good guy, please, no, don’t make me leave! Hey!

One thing could be said about the experience, it did make her think and reflect about her actions and examine her mistakes, which is something that very rarely happens in a police station. Usually there is far more blaming other people and denying everything. Not her, though. She had learned from it.

Of course the takeaway from the lesson might not have been the desired one. She learned that she had left an obvious trail, that she had trusted the wrong people, that she didn’t have enough resources to start over and that she was a very good liar. She learned how she had been caught and also how to slip away.

The next time she was brunette again, working as a secretary in a construction company that was so corrupt it was a wonder they got anything built. Her name was Amanda, but she went by Amy because she thought it sounded more feminine and dainty. She spoke in a high pitch tone and never rolled her eyes when she was patronized. She got away with 85 thousand dollars with just thirteen months of work. If there was a trail pointing at her in the embezzlement investigation, it was buried in the web of bribes to local government officials and violations of OSHA and FDA regulations.

Mackenzie and Chloe came almost back to back. Both blondes. Both always laughed at people’s jokes. One got 130K and the other 60K plus a painting and a few jewels. The jewels she kept for an emergency and she donated the painting to a museum. She didn’t have any use for it and it felt wrong to destroy it.

Then there was raven-haired Kelly. A bit over two years of work and a nice prize of 360K that could quite easily had been twice as much. All because someone in the company thought that 3% on property taxes was too much and did anything to avoid paying them. When people try to hide money it is much easier to steal. They have done half the work for you.

Life wasn’t bad, which isn’t the same as saying it was good. She had to keep three different safe places to fall back on and she couldn’t buy lasting things. She couldn’t have a boyfriend, or a dog. Not even a house plant. The idea of letting a plant die made her feel guilty but she had to be able to drop everything and run. There was always the threat of something or someone from her past reaching her. She might have been a bit too careless and definitely recklessly daring. She had made enemies.

She thought: Maybe one or two big jobs with equally big prizes and then she would go legit. Give a try to life without an expiration date.

So she got some nice clothes and let her hair go back to her natural color so she wouldn’t have to worry about keeping it dyed, and started testing the waters. Looking for people with way more money than sense. People who were smart, because smart people are proud of their intelligence and think that they can’t be deceived.

Killian was promising and there was a gentleman called Osborn who was an utter disaster begging to be manipulated. But when she got close to Tony in a museum gala she instantly knew he was better. He was perfect, in fact. Rich, brilliant, and with no idea of how the world worked. Well, neither did the other two, but there was something about Tony that said “naïve” that was absent from the others. As if, somehow, the orphan boy turned arms dealer didn’t know that there were bad people in the world.

The only problem with Tony was the competition. Cut-throat, vicious, angry competition, all circling Tony like the sharks and vultures they were. From the Amicable Godfather to the Stylist who dressed him to the— Well, everyone. Everyone but the chauffeur and the college friend (allegedly; she still wasn’t certain about either of them). All wanting their piece of the ridiculously rich cash cow.

They were ambitious and a bit cruel. You had to be cruel to succeed. You couldn’t _care_ about your target. But they were not as good at her, not at all. They were impatient and they didn’t have enough practice. She had half a dozen jobs at her back.

Charlize was Tony’s assistant. He had two assistants, actually. One for work things and another for private things and home stuff. Charlize was the first one and she was working on seducing Tony, getting him drunk, and marrying him.

Wrong. It was too much too quickly. Charlize succeeded in the first two steps, which wasn’t saying much because any waitress over the legal age could do the same. They slept together, kept drinking, and before they had sex again Charlize suggested this time they should try it married. Tony agreed initially (he was a disaster, that was why _she_ had chosen him) but since he wasn’t as horny as before he wasn’t impatient. Something about the trashy décor of the chapel gave him an idea for a new kind of electromagnetic circuit so he left to go do that instead and left his bride-to-be in the counter where she was filling out the license.

And then, oh sweetheart, then it became obvious that dear Charlize was too impatient and that she couldn’t take a small setback. She went to Tony with two very obvious self-inflicted bruises (How, girl? It was really bad. _She_ had busted her lip and bruised her wrists much better). She threatened him with a knife and said that if Tony didn’t marry her that instant she would call the police and report him for assault.

You see her mistake, right? She should have demanded a payout, not marriage. He might have paid her to get her to go away, but even Tony wouldn’t marry such crazy. One has to know when to let go of the original plan and adapt to the new circumstances.

For example, _she_ was going to take things slowly and not draw Tony’s attention until she knew everything about him and his surroundings. Slow infiltration and only make contact when she felt in control and knew the competition well. But when you have a deranged woman threatening your befuddled boss in the middle of a corridor to— shit, see? She didn’t know where that corridor went. Didn’t matter. There was a violent woman with a knife and there was her, the recently-born Virginia Potts, BA in Administration (unfinished, but she would get around it, it’s just two subjects), reddish blonde and blue-eyed and all legs and an impish smile. A bit of a Daddy’s girl. That was the name of a daddy’s girl who wanted to be a professional woman too.

She got her cute little pink pepper spray out of her purse and she emptied it on Charlize. When your sin is impatience the punishment shall come very quickly.

“Would you like me to call the police, Mister Stark?” she said, with just a bit of an impish smile. She tossed her hair, nice, long, over her shoulder.

“Not necessary. Jarvis called them fifteen minutes ago, they are on their way,” Tony said, which surprised her and she didn’t like surprises. Further proof that she had to go slow because who the hell was Jarvis and how come Tony was so unfazed by everything?

She was good, though. She was better than any of the vultures surrounding him.

“Anything to drink?”

“Ah, yes, orange juice with tomato and one of those little green things nobody likes, the girl knows how to do it. Where is she, by the way? Veronica?? Oh, and, um, who are you?”

“I’m Virginia Potts, sir. Veronica left six months ago. Lindsey was her substitute, but she had some sort of trouble. This is my trial week.”

Tony shrugged and didn’t even ask any other questions beyond the name of that green thing everybody disliked. (Celery).

Virginia Potts didn’t know what had happened to Lindsey, but the woman playing her knew very well that she had been arrested on multiple charges of possession because, again, Lindsey had been impatient and she hadn’t committed enough to the job.  

You couldn’t afford any mistake in a situation like that. Virginia Potts drove like a driving instructor because she wasn’t letting a little speeding ticket ruin her. She also impersonated a concerned neighbor and called the police over the supposed fight in Lindsey’s apartment. There was no fight, but the police came anywhere and found the drugs Lindsey’s boyfriend had left there.

So now she was the new home personal assistant, but since the office personal assistant had also been arrested for her stupid knife trick (there were cameras! There were cameras everywhere in the house! This was going to be _difficult_ ), Virginia took on that role too.

________

 

“I _know_ I have a meeting. What I’m saying is that don’t want to go, so make up a good excuse, Pepper Spray.”

“Potts. I’m Virginia Potts, Mister Stark.”

“Pepper Potts, all right. Not going to that thing. Tell them I died or something.”

She understood why so many people were impatient in their quest to steal Tony’s money. The man was very irritating.

Still, she was in and she started to work the job. Jobs, plural. Earning  Tony’s and everyone’s trust and access too, so she could rob Tony clean, and also managing Tony day to day both in the office and at home. It was easier than if she had been just the home assistant. More work, sure, but she knew where Tony was 73% of the time, which was a hitherto unheard of achievement.

Quietly and efficiently and, above all, ruthlessly, she began to rid herself of the competition. Not Pepper, Pepper was super nice and soft and trusting, but the woman behind her.

She tipped off the HIPAA about some violations Tony’s family doctor might have committed (unrelated to Stark Industries, of course. They never fell because of their proximity to Tony) so the man was unable to make Tony sign a sketchy power of attorney to him. It was hard to believe, but apparently he was planning on putting Tony in a coma and becoming his legal representative. She foiled two more marriage ploys. Found and burned (metaphorically… mostly) three corporate spies. Dismissed two MIT professors trying to get their names attached to Tony’s inventions. Obliterated that sleazy psychic who claimed to be able to talk with Tony’s mom.

Pepper wasn’t in love with Tony and neither was Virginia Potts or the woman who was playing her. Love was for people who weren’t born in prison.

She could have friends, though. They were recommended, even, to avoid suspicions. Maggie at the bar had had plenty of friends. Amy had been friendly and she even slept from time to time with, uh, Clive? Cliff? With Cliff, who worked there and was very handsome if absolutely terrible at managing his life.

Pepper was friends with Claire from the law office, who was nice but also a terrible chatterer and quite a liability given how easy it was to get her to share private information. Happy, too, spoke a bit too much but he was also quite protective of Tony so he had some sense of when to shut up. Claire didn’t. Claire would be the one to show Pepper how exactly she could steal twenty million dollars without anyone the wiser. Twenty Million.

So she did it. That was the objective from the start. She got the money and she hid it and even prepared a new identity that would have everything in perfect legal standing. She didn’t disappear right away though. It was better to stay put a little more and then quietly quit (no one would bat an eye) and fade away. If someone discovered that some money was missing, they wouldn’t trace it back to her because she hadn’t changed even a little bit after the theft. Fourteen months and she would be clean and rich.

It was perfect. It was going to be really good. She was going to live in Oregon, name herself after some book character and own a fish (she was starting small in the animal department).

And then Tony disappeared in Afghanistan and Pepper was stuck there. She couldn’t quit. It would draw attention to her and they were already at risk of an audit. She couldn’t quit.

And then he came back.

She might have left then. He was acting weird and it was the perfect excuse. Only Tony asked her to stick her hand on his chest and literally hold his life in her hands. His life. A simple gadget of metal and wire that was the heart of the poor lonely orphan boy turned arms dealer. It made Pepper think of the old tale about the Snow Queen and the shard of ice in her heart. Tony had asked her to touch that. There had always been something naïve about him.

Tony was an immense asshole. He was callous and narcissistic and insufferable and from time to time he turned and gave you a sign of actual human emotion, something raw and vulnerable and akin to a religious experience. As if you were the only one who could make the robot boy feel, the only one to melt the ice shards embedded in the heart and the eyes.

You can’t betray someone right after that, you understand. You have to let six months pass at least.

Or so she thought. Obadiah evidently disagreed. She had never liked him but he had been around for so long! He had even helped protect Tony from some of the vultures, so she had dismissed him. A magnificent long con on his part and one that ultimately gave him nothing. He burned and crashed very quickly.

She promised herself: One year. One year for Tony to get back on his feet and she would be out. Not because she loved him or anything. It was just a courtesy for a man who had had the world vanish under his feet.

One year.

________

 

She knew that _Natalia_ was fake from the very moment she walked in. She was efficient, useful, courteous without being a pushover, distractingly beautiful while being modest. She was very much like Pepper and _she_ knew that Pepper was fake.

The fact that she was some kind of spy for a secret government agency was… new. And unexpected. She had seriously thought she was in corporate espionage, not actual, plain old espionage. She was even Russian, come on!

Of course, the interest of a government agency in Tony made her exit more difficult. They might not look into it, but if they did, they had the knowledge and resources to find her. On the other hand, now that Tony had the attention of a secret agency she was sure that he would be well cared for.

________

She left.

Sure, she was fond of Happy and Rhodey and she was… something of Tony, she was more than fond of him. She had money and a very nice orchid in her office that demanded lots of delicate care and attention.

She still left, for all those reasons. She didn’t know what to do with stability and permanence and loving trust. She left.

She was gone less than five days.

Pepper was a mess, she knew that. Tony was a much bigger mess who overshadowed everyone else’s problems so people looked fine in contrast, but Pepper knew she had issues. She was significantly quicker in dealing with them, though.

On her way back, she came across the woman who would be her substitute. Pepper jumped on her on her way home and repeatedly hit her on the face with a brick. It wasn’t as nasty or insane as it sounds. She wanted to steal Tony’s weapons, which justified a brick to the face in Pepper’s opinion. Also, she was surprisingly resistant, almost as if she had some kind of enhancement so she wasn’t hurt _that_ badly.

Evidently SHIELD wasn’t as good at protecting Tony as expected. Look, Pepper didn’t mind if Tony lost his fortune, he was brilliant enough to build it back, but she would like it if people quit trying to kill him or manipulate him into going back to designing weapons.

The girl, Rachel, (although that wasn't her real name) had mumbled some nonsense about how two more would take her place. Perhaps Pepper shouldn’t think too much of it because she had also said “hey, a hydrant” before getting away. Evidently she had gotten one too many hits on the head. Still, it worried Pepper because it was true. There would always be someone trying to take advantage of Tony.

________

 

She stayed. She wouldn’t say that it was out of love because she had no idea what love looked like, but she stayed and she promised to burn anyone who tried to hurt Tony.

She didn’t know if Tony had always known, or if he discovered it halfway or if he still didn’t know. Tony was a bit weird in how he behaved with people. He _had_ asked her to marry him, but then again two days after meeting his battle buddies he had begun designing a flat for each of them.

(She and Hawkeye had seen each other somewhere. They agreed that it must had been in North Carolina, where Pepper “studied” her BA. But she had never been there.)


	2. People with Gene HCL2

Tony said, and would keep saying it for years, that it was the single most terrifying moment of his life. Scarier than being orphaned and realizing he was not prepared to navigate the world and had no idea who to trust so he would have to wing it; scarier than seeing a bomb with his name on it and waking up in a cave in Afghanistan with a chunk of metal in his heart; scarier that grabbing a nuke with his own two hands and directing it through a wormhole until his suit turned off and afterwards falling, falling, falling.

Most people, when he explained, looked at him with a serious expression, lips pressed tight and nodding in understanding. Yes. It had been terrible.

The terrible day with the terrible moment had started pleasantly enough with sunrays and honest-to-god birds singing nearby. There had been breakfast and Tony had made a show of eating a piece of fruit and drinking a glass of orange juice so Pepper couldn’t complain about how he didn’t take care of himself. Then he had worked in the lab, laughing at something with Bruce, and then he had had lunch with Pepper. It had been sunny and pleasantly cool. One of those spring days when you feel energized by the sun rather than baked and hot and sweaty.

They went to a SHIELD meeting afterwards, both of them. Pepper wasn’t supposed to come but at this point Tony wasn’t even bothering to pretend that he didn’t tell her everything immediately and she wanted to go see this exhibition at the Smithsonian so they may as well go do that if they were going to make Tony fly to Washington to begin with.

This didn’t help Tony’s PTSD. It didn’t help at all.

They were attacked. Right there at one of SHIELD’s offices and with half the Avengers in the building. They were attacked. Glass shards and bullets and ex-Russian spies flying every which way. He had pushed Pepper out of the way even before he thought of summoning his suit.

He had done everything right except for bringing her here in the first place, getting her involved in his messy life and putting her in danger.

There was an explosion. A small one. But it was enough to take a wall down and expose Pepper who until then had been well protected. Still, since freaking Captain America and Iron Man were there you would think they would hold the attention of their attackers. They were big and colorful and important and hitting back and the bad guys should be looking at them.

But no.

Someone saw the opportunity. Tony couldn’t describe him beyond that it had to be a man by the width of his shoulders. He was all dressed in black tactical gear and he had a mask on. He looked at Tony. That was the worst part except for the really Worst Part that came right afterwards. He looked at Tony and Tony couldn’t see his eyes or the expression of his face behind his tactical mask but he could imagine a smile.

The man shot Pepper in the chest three times. He missed the fourth and fifth shots because Natasha had tackled him by then, but in any case Pepper had already dropped to the floor.

By all accounts Tony’s scream had such sorrow and pain that it squeezed their hearts and gave pause to everyone except the best trained. Natasha incapacitated that guy and a second one. Maria Hill killed three others before the rest of them, Avengers, SHIELD operatives and attackers, were able to move. It still felt like too little because he had seen Pepper, his Pepper, fall to the floor with red flowers blooming in her silk blouse. Tony kind of wished he could turn into the Hulk. It seemed the only appropriate reaction. And while he was turned into a creature of anger and destruction he wouldn’t have to think about how Pepper was dead.

“Tony, Tony!”

He didn’t remember lifting the faceplate. Maybe he didn’t. Maybe it was the suit’s decision. He remembered thinking that he was in shock and disassociating like no one’s business. There was a tingling sensation on his fingertips and he couldn’t move.

“Tony!”

Pepper kissed his lips and that seemed to pull him back. Not all the way back though, no, because Pepper was kissing him but he had seen Pepper fall with three shots to the chest so it just was not possible that she had gotten up and crossed a conference room that was currently a battlefield just so she could kiss her stupid boyfriend and bring him back from his stupor.

Steve’s shield flew over their heads and knocked one of the attackers down. The noise in the room was decreasing, but maybe that was the shock. Or maybe he was dying. He wished he were dying. He didn’t want to deal with Pepper’s death, might as well die too.

“Tony. It’s all right, Tony. I’m all right.”

“Pepper.” Tony stuttered her name, his hands coming up to her back.

“I mean, it hurt a lot and I am all bruised I won’t lie,” she said, as if she were telling him of a difficult meeting. “But I am fine.”

________

Tony was the only one not to question it. Everybody else was a bit concerned that Pepper had apparently survived three gunshots to the chest. They were happy, of course everyone was glad that Pepper was alive, but this was still a SHIELD facility so people were asking questions. Some SHIELD agents had carefully collected the three bloodstained bullets from the floor and they had run with them before anyone could ask them to hand them back.

“Miss Potts,” Fury said, and Tony was a bit glad that this merited the director of SHIELD himself rather than an anonymous agent. “We are, of course, very happy that you have survived this action unscathed.”

“My chest is black and blue,” Pepper said. She was reclining on a makeshift couch, her back resting against Tony.

Fury nodded. “Yes, we have some questions about that. You were not wearing any protection. The lab tells me that you only wore an unmodified Gucci blouse.”

He looked at Tony when he said “unmodified” as if he expected him to alter his girlfriend’s clothes to offer her bullet protection.

Which was an idea, but he still didn’t know how to resolve the weight problem the modification would have. Also those clothes had low necklines and high skirt hems so they would leave a lot exposed.

“I suppose I have a healing factor,” Pepper said simply and took a sip of the apple juice someone had brought her. “Of course, you never know about it until you get shot.”

Tony suspected that her nonchalance was on purpose and that it was for his benefit, so he could watch Fury gape like a fish. This, by the way, was the mark of true love. Your partner trolling someone for you.

It turned out that Pepper was, simply put, a mutant. She had an invitation to the Xavier School for Weird Little Kids and everything. It also turned out, and this shouldn’t surprise anyone, that she wasn’t interested in being a mutant. She had rejected the invitation and gone to a private school where they played lacrosse and then studied Business Administration, which was what she liked.

“But…” said Agent Whathisname for the third time. Not Coulson. Coulson nodded as if everything made perfect sense to him.

“Just because you have a talent for something doesn’t mean you have to follow that path.” Pepper said.

“And what can you do?” Maria asked bluntly. But she was friends with Pepper, she could be blunt.

“Manipulate fire, mostly.”

Sam Wilson had to excuse himself and go to the corridor but they could still hear him laughing.

Clint raised his hand timidly, looking aside at Fury as if he could tell that he would be angry.

“Is Pepper your mutant codename then?”


	3. The Lost People

 

 

They were all lost, had been lost for centuries now. The Hidden People. The Fair Folk. The Charming Ones from the White Court. There was no one left who had visited the court. No one to remember.

The Elves were gone. Their court and their palace long fallen and crumbling. Their songs and their language, their rituals, their religion, their magic, all turned to dust and silence. It was all gone and there was nothing.

The Elves were gone, but there were still some elves around. Alone and orphaned, with no culture or language or country to call their own and no hope for them either. The Elves had been gone for centuries now, after an agony that had also been centuries long. But their children remained. They didn’t know the old songs or the language; they only had half-remembered accounts of the beauty of the White Court and mispronounced words in the old language. But they had the laugh and the touch of magic and the charm and the madness in their hearts.

She had the magic and the beauty and a golden ring that belonged to her grandmother that always returned to its owner no matter what. Her mother used to pawn it when they were very short of money, knowing that it would come back to her. Since her mother had left to go live (and possibly die) somewhere cold and by the sea, she had pawned it twice.

She didn’t have anything else. Just a ring, beauty and a touch of magic.

She did have a name in the old tongue. It meant Maiden of the Pure Touch, which was much in line with elven names. The Elves named their children things like that knowing full well that they would steal and nick and take from the moment they could stand up. The ones called Gentle were the worst. Although it was nothing more than a tradition now, nobody stole a baby or a maiden’s beauty or a princess’ joy anymore. They didn’t know how and it had been so long that they didn’t have any interest either. They merely had the old names so that’s what they used.

She also had a Last Name, a combination of her father’s (whom she hadn’t met) and her mother’s (who left her when she was still very young). Her family name was Garden of the Fountain with Seven Taps and a Tree with a Silver Branch.

Because her name was Maiden of the Pure Touch she chose the name Virginia for living with the Humans. There was nothing adequate for a family name so she chose Potts simply because she liked how it sounded, like a fat droplet of water falling and hitting something.

The Maiden of the Pure Touch from the Garden of the Fountain with Seven Taps and a Tree with a Silver Branch lived her life and learned to survive in the human world. She got human papers to make herself an identity. She got different jobs. She was a bit lonely. She managed to survive.

She was, at times,  _very_  lonely. It had been years since she had seen someone like her. Someone of the fay world. She refused to think that she might be the last one, the only one.

And then, quite by chance, she found another.

He didn’t have the laugh and it could be argued that neither had he the beauty. He had the eyes, though, big eyes with a hint of madness and the charm and the magic. Oh, the magic! She had heard about it, read the accounts of the people who had seen it in action. Everybody agreed on how fantastic his magic was.

And he was there and he was real and The Maiden of the Pure Touch, Virginia, felt her heart flutter and her blood rush with want. It might be love and it might be lust, but above all it was the joy of not being alone any more.

He looked at her, an easy smile on his lips and his eyebrows rising with interest. She felt herself blush with excitement and anticipation. She wanted to touch and play and take.

“And who is this lovely blushing lady?” he asked, and his words were charming and also a bit unkind as was the style of the Elves. “Red as a pepper, face and hair.”

“My name is Virginia Potts,” she said, a bit short of breath but speaking nonetheless like a high lady of the White Court.

“Pepper Potts,” he said, smiling like a cat.

He didn’t say anything about the Elves, which she understood. There were so few of them left, it was best to be prudent. He did ask her to quit her job and come with him and she accepted, believing that it was his subtle way of saying that he had recognized her for what she was. It would only be a few years later when she would realize that Tony collected people and bought the things he wanted with little consideration for the possibility of a “no.”

That she had been mistaken and that Tony Stark was not an elf,  _that_  she had realized sooner, a year after she joined him. It hurt her in her inner core and she was embarrassed and disappointed and feeling a bit alone again. But she stayed nonetheless because Tony was a human who could pass as an elf and that made life interesting.

________

She had to revise her opinion after Tony came back from Afghanistan. It seemed impossible. No human should be able to do that.

But he was not an elf and she liked him even more for it. The thought that she might be the only one left didn’t bother her as much anymore. Not when she was with him.

________

“We don’t know the source of this,” said Philip Coulson, indicating the small ring of willow branches and purple flowers that the attacker had dropped. It was, quite clearly, an Elven ring to hold a curse.

“It looks like a curse ring of the Elves,” said Thor, so thankfully Pepper didn’t have to. Technically she wasn’t supposed to sit in that meeting, but Tony still didn’t consider the possibility of a “no” and he wanted her by his side. He had had a nightmare again last night, about falling through a dark hole and slowly freezing over, and Pepper’s presence made things better.

Tony said that it was love. He loved her and having her close made things better. It might be so, but Pepper knew that her presence _made_ things better. She made a point of sitting with Natasha and Bucky for that reason.

“There no such things as elves in Earth,” Coulson said. “Midgar,” he added.

“Sure there is,” Thor insisted. “The White Court. Many years ago.”

Wanda was nodding her head. “Yes. There are stories. Folk stories, but also true stories. The White Court of the Elves. It fell centuries ago and nothing remains other than a few heirlooms.”

Coulson looked calmly at the ring of branches that was the size of a small dish. They could almost see him mentally reassessing the filing description for the ring, tagging it as a supernatural and historical artefact. That was the good thing about Coulson, he took things very mildly. So there used to be elves, fine, he would create a new filing category.

“We should check if any Wiccan vegans are selling something more than potpourri in their shops,” said Tony cheerfully, already pulling up a list of addresses and mumbling about shady shops that didn’t keep the provenance of their products.

“Museums too,” added Natasha. “Might have been stolen from one.”

Steve was leaning against Tony, frowning as he studied the map and pointing at likely places. On the other side of the table Bucky was slowly and carefully extending his left arm, the metal one, towards the willow ring. And they called him the White Wolf? Bucky was the closest a human could get to a cat.

“It looks fresh to me,” Pepper said, because she couldn’t help herself and because they had attacked Lubbock, Texas, and she had a soft spot for the whole city. “Perhaps it is not an old relic. It could had been made recently.”

Natasha and Steve looked at her with interest because those two liked listening to different ideas and also assumed everything was a lie. Thor, meanwhile, moved his head sadly.

“The Elves are gone. There is no one left to make a new ring like this,” he said . And then, “even if the branches and the flowers do look fresh.”

“Maybe the Elves are gone,” Pepper tried again, gently. “But there a few left, here and there, who remember what their grandparents taught them.”

Thor didn’t think so. Wanda, their resident magic adviser, agreed. No more Elves. They would know about it, if there were any Elves left.

“Perhaps not in groups,” she insisted. “But a few individual elves here and there.”

Coulson was now staring at her with the same quiet assessment with which he had looked at the ring. Tony, bless his heart, was bickering with Steve and also throwing pencils at Sam for whatever reason.

“Aww, Pepper wants to believe in elves and fairies,” he said, kissing her hair softly. Even when it looked like Tony wasn’t listening, he was. “Don’t worry dear, there can be elves if you want.”

“I just think it is something to consider,” Pepper said in a mild tone. This was important. It showed that she was not alone, that she was not the last elf on Earth. It was also upsetting because if the other possible remaining elf was going to be an asshole who attacked the cities Pepper liked, then she would have to do something about it.

For whatever reason Thor felt the need to insist. Thor was a nice guy, honestly nice, but he could be a bit… stubborn. He believed everything was true with the same strength of conviction with which Steve and Natasha automatically suspected everything.

“I am afraid that the last Elves disappeared from Midgar a long time ago.”

“Again, maybe one or two remained,” she said in a voice that was a tad irritated. “Just because the White Court is gone and there is no one to speak the old language and the songs are all forgotten, it doesn’t mean that the people themselves are all gone.”

Sam Wilson was raising his hand, like a student in class. Sam Wilson was a treasure.

“Until five minutes ago we didn’t know that there had been elves at any point. And two years ago nobody could point to Wakanda on a map.”

“Sam believes in elves and fairies too!” Tony sang. Five minutes later he had already designed and printed the club cards for the Friends of the Elves Society. Pepper stopped him just in time before he created an actual society with money and legal entity. It was things like this, asshole things, that made her believe he had to be at least half elf.

________

It would happen later that day, at night time actually. On days like this, when they spent hours planning and discussing, they tended to have dinner together. Those who chose not to live in the tower would stay the night anyway and depart in the morning.

Steve Rogers came to her. As blond and big and strong as he was, Pepper never had any doubts that he was human. Even with the serum. Human all the way.

“Miss Potts,” he said. He called her Miss Potts. Sometimes he also said Pepper and then looked embarrassed because that was a vegetable, not a real name. See? He couldn’t be an elf.

“Yes, Steve?”

“Are you an elven princess?”

Pepper was slightly surprised. She had thought that it would be Coulson the first to ask, and that it would be in a more private setting. Perhaps Natasha, dropping subtle hints and checking that she couldn’t hurt anyone if she took the question badly.

“No, Steve,” she said gently, giving him one of her best smiles.

Tony was sitting on a counter (of course he was) gasping and looking delighted. He had already pulled up a program on his tablet and was putting a flower crown on Steve’s photo for his Friends of the Elves Society club card. (Bucky was the only one without a card on account of having tossed the curse ring from the table).

“I completely understand,” piped Tony. “Pepper is so amazing, it’s like she stepped out of a book of fairy tales.”

He laughed. Steve laughed awkwardly. Sam said something about besotted people who shouldn’t make fun of others.

“There isn’t a royal line anymore,” Pepper explained. “And even if there was, the crown of the White Court wasn’t hereditary. The children of the King and Queen, while important, were not princes or princesses.”

“Uh,” Steve said. “I see. Thank you.”

Tony stopped mid-action, a message on his tablet prompting him to save the changes on Steve’s picture. “Did– did you, did you two agree on this?”

“No, Tony,” they said in unison. In the background, Natasha was calling Coulson to come over.

“I don’t think I believe them,” Rhodey whispered to Bruce, who had no idea what was going on because he hadn’t been listening.

“Are you telling me…”

“That I am an Elf. I have a name that you can’t pronounce and a ring that always comes back to me and the laugh and the magic.”

There was a long and stretched out silence but thankfully it wasn’t particularly tense, just bemused. It wasn’t as if Pepper had just sprung the topic on them out of nowhere. She would have seemed crazy then. But they had already believed six impossible things that day so they could believe in this one too. If elves kept silent about their existence it wasn’t out of fear, she didn’t think so, but out of dislike of being called liars and crazy.

And then there was Tony, who might not be an elf but was the most elvish creature Pepper had ever met.

“I own three islands. I can make one of them a country and you can be Queen there if you want.”

“But,” said Clint in a whisper to Nat, “I thought her name was Pepper?” 

 

 


	4. The People from the Red Room

“Uh,” Pepper said gently, like someone who had been struggling with a crossword for half the morning and after checking the answers discovers that the capital of Alaska is Juneau, not Anchorage.

It was a pretty mild reaction, given the circumstances.

They had just gotten some documents from Hydra about some old Soviet programs. In between all the terrible torture they had practiced on Bucky and the equally terrible training Natasha had endured, there had surfaced some files of other agents. Agents that Hydra wanted to secure for itself or eliminate. You couldn’t have such talented people roaming around with no master, or even worse with a master that was your enemy.

There was a file for agent 83, Валерия Астахова, Valeriya Astakhova, code name лебедь which Natasha said meant “Swan.”

The photograph of Agent 83 had Pepper’s face on it.  

“So that’s where I come from,” Pepper said, still with the tone of someone who could have sworn that Anchorage was the capital. Why wouldn’t it be? Nobody knew any other cities in Alaska. She was cold and numb. “I would never have guessed.”

Bruce was by far the calmest person in the room. Then again, Bruce was always very calm in all stressful situations. It was a job requirement, you could say. He was also a doctor, not a medical doctor but a doctor nonetheless and Pepper trusted him. They had discussed her problems with amnesia in between teaching her how to deal with EXTREMIS while she waited for Tony to find a way to get it out of her.

On that matter, during a full body scan to learn more about the distribution and effects of the serum in her body, Tony (actually Jarvis, but Tony was the one to give it meaning), had noticed that Pepper had multiple healed fractures in her bones, particularly in her fingers. Tony had asked, gently but quivering with an energy that he was barely keeping down, he had asked if she wanted to tell him something like a name and a physical description and he had promised right away that he wouldn’t use the Iron Man suit. He would beat the bastard old style. Bruce had declined to comment because he had grown up in a house in which his mother also had frequent fractures in her arms and he couldn’t make any promises as to the presence of the Hulk.

“I don’t remember,” Pepper had said, and Tony hadn’t been satisfied with her answer even a little bit but he had also stepped back and given her space. He did pry and poke because it was Tony and it was in his nature. Pepper knew he had a folder open with the broken bones scan and a list of missing women that could match her description, but he respected her when she said she didn’t remember nor did she want to remember or investigate. She suspected that Bruce had had a talk with him telling him to let it go for her sake. Pepper was happy. She had made a very nice life for herself and didn’t feel the need to investigate what was in her past, especially when that past was full of broken bones.

And now, this. A secret base in Russia. A spy training program. Her face in those pictures.

Steve was looking at her with a heartbroken expression. But then, how many people he knew had turned out to be something else? Not all of them were enemies, of course. That girl from SHIELD, Pepper didn’t have her name, the one pretending to be a friendly neighbor. _She_ didn’t work for Hydra, unlike Steve’s usual barista who tried to shoot him in the face last week. But Pepper understood that Steve had experienced quite a lot of betrayal and deception.

He and Tony should talk about it and share experiences. It ought to be therapeutic.

“Miss Potts experiences long-term amnesia regarding the first twenty to twenty-five years of her life,” Jarvis informed the room because everybody was silent and someone had to say something.

There were a few oohs and I-didn’t-knows and she said that it wasn’t the kind of topic that came up in casual conversation and everybody nodded and agreed, of course, of course, difficult to talk about it while deciding what to have for dinner, especially with Tony around making noise. It just didn’t come up, perfectly understandable. But there still was some underlying tension in the room because they had just discovered that Pepper used to be a Soviet agent and might be working for Hydra for all they knew.

Then Bucky spoke. Whatever he had to say, it would be worthwhile because he was one hell of an educated source on brainwashing and amnesia and clawing your way out of it. Natasha too was an excellent source, but Natasha was too busy shifting to her left and positioning herself in between Pepper and the door just in case. Pepper didn’t take offense. It was actually pretty nice that Nat was so concerned with protecting the group. 

“I know what everybody is thinking,” Bucky said with that voice of his that was soft and gentle, as if he were unused to speaking or afraid of being punished. It only got livelier when he was with Steve and Sam. “But if Pepper were a sleeper agent sent to kill Tony, she would had killed him a long time ago. Or let him do something stupid and kill himself.”

Sound logic.

“Sorry honey,” Tony said turning his chair towards her and grinning like an extremely rich cat who owned several farms and all the cream in them. “You can’t kill me now, even if I deserve it. People will think you are a spy.”

And Pepper was so, so, grateful for those words! So grateful for his immediate acceptance. Just as when he had asked her for a name, for permission to avenge her and punish those who had hurt her. Because Tony loved her, he loved the woman she was now, and he was truly able to let go of the past. He certainly wasn’t one to hold people’s pasts against them.

“So, you just didn’t know where you came from? Where you were born?” asked Sam. Sam could be relied on to ask defusing questions in uncomfortable situations. Sam had made the Hulk go back into Bruce at least four times.

Pepper shrugged.

“I woke up naked and bruised on a river bank and made my way up.”

“Wait, wait!” exclaimed Clint. “Were you in Virginia? Did you actually choose your name after the state where you woke up?”

Pepper had no idea why that seemed so important to Clint.

“No. I, um, I was actually in North Carolina.”

“Good call, babe, you are not a Caroline.” Tony said, grabbing her hand. This from the same man who had nicknamed her Pepper.

“I think I was near Roanoke Rapids Lake. _Welcome to Virginia_ was the first sign I saw.”

“Oh My God,” Clint yelled. It was still unclear whether it was excitement or indignation. As if he had never lost his memory and been running around with a stupid name.


	5. New York People

“OH MY GOD WHAT IS THIS WADE?” screamed Pepper, the woman who had remained calm during Tony and Bruce’s improved barbeque incident.    

“You don’t like it?” Deadpool asked, sounded honestly crestfallen that, for whatever reason, Pepper didn’t appreciate the arrangement of human fingers he had given her like some sort of macabre pincushion. “They are their trigger fingers.”

“Oh My God,” she cried again, still holding the package while also trying not to touch it. So, basically, she was holding it with her fingernails.

“I knew I should had gone with their penises. Because they were a bunch of dicks, you know. I guess I can still do that!”

“Wade!”

“No?”

“No.”

Deadpool shrugged, as if the reproach wasn’t too important. He got a tiny little notebook from one of his pockets and an equally small pencil. The notebook’s cover had a cute drawing of a pepper with eyes and a mouth who claimed to be a hot deal.

“No… gifts…” Deadpool said aloud as he wrote, “made of human remains. Hey, you sure about this? Because some cultures do very cool things with bones. I saw it in a museum once. I don’t know what was I doing there, it doesn’t sound like me. I am more of the uncultured swine variety, although I do get emotional with that penguin aria from _Tosca_ , but who doesn’t?” He stopped for a second, tapping his mouth with the pencil stub. “You know, I probably went with you to the museum because Vanessa is more of an arcade girl. So this is on you. You can’t show a guy a musical instrument made out of a tibia and then say you don’t like a floral dick arrangement.”

Pepper took a deep breath, opening her eyes wide and lifting her head as if she were trying to make herself taller and find her balance. It was a gesture that she did a lot. She was already doing it before she met Tony which probably accounted for her success. Most people tended to facepalm or close their eyes in disbelief around Tony and that’s when he ran away to do the stupid thing. She kept her eyes open around him and made herself bigger so she had a better rate of success than most confronting Tony.

What was her life, dear God.

She was carefully depositing the—thing on the floor when she finally heard the voice she had been missing, hotly, painfully, for the last few days.

“Pepper?” Tony said, like a man in the desert weary of finding a mirage.

“Oh, God, Tony, you are all right!”

For a while nobody said anything, too busy kissing away the fear that this time it might be it, this time Tony might not make it back and Pepper would never sleep again.

Deadpool had wandered away a few steps to give them privacy and even turned his back on them. He was also using the time to do some improvised tai chi, which is always something interesting to see but especially when performed by a man in red and black leather standing in a circle of human fingers.

“Oh, Pepper, it’s so good to see you!” Tony was holding her face in his hands as if he were looking at the face of the sun or of some ancient god. “Why are you here? How did you—?”

“The government got a trace of your possible location, but they said they couldn’t intervene and that they would have to form a committee to debate whether or not it was their responsibility and in the best interest of the nation. Honestly? I just think that Ross wanted you to die. Rhodey tipped me off and gave me the coordinates. Stark Industries is an independent company and we can go wherever, so I hired a mercenary and got you out. Yay for capitalism.” The last few words were said with the goofiest smile. She insisted three to five times a day that Stark Industries shouldn’t relocate their plants to countries with lax child work regulation.

“Wait.” Tony gave a small step back, although he was still holding Pepper and would not let her go. “Are you telling me… You know this lunatic?”

“You are the moon of my nights, too!” yelled Deadpool over his shoulder.

Pepper gave him a soft smile and began to push Tony towards the stealth plane.

There wasn’t anything to it. Every single person who has ever lived in New York for a period of time has a similar story. Overcrowding, together with criminal rent prices force people into strange and sometimes shameful living arrangements. Renting couches and closets and beds to sleep through the day if you had a night shift. Everyone had a weird story of a roommate or a neighbor. Everyone. Even the people the stories were about had roommate stories of their own.

Pepper had studied for her bachelor’s in New York. Like everyone else, she had a roommate story. Most of them were about her actual roommates, seven college girls in an apartment with only four bedrooms. But she also had stories about Wade, the talkative neighbor from the building next to theirs. Yes, the guy who would rather jump from his window to theirs rather than going down the stairs, leaving his building, entering the next building, climbing up (nobody had elevators in those buildings) and knocking on their door. _That_ crazy guy.

“I think you left out a lot in your stories,” Tony said as they got inside the plane that would take them out of there. Deadpool was coming behind them, doing cartwheels.

“Clint flew us here.” Pepper said. Indeed, Clint was waving from the cockpit of the ship that couldn’t really be called a plane. “He knows Wade, too. You can complain together, if you want.”

“Nice to see you, Tony,” greeted Clint. “Glad you are alive. Your girlfriend is insane.”


End file.
